


Check to the Head; or, One in Five

by elumish



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Angst, Anxiety, Gen, Healing, Hopeful Ending, Jack Zimmermann's Overdose, Sign Language, Suicidal Thoughts, selective mutism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 16:40:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21377233
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elumish/pseuds/elumish
Summary: Thirteen seconds after taking too many pills, Jack knows he’s going to die, and he’s not as bothered by that as he probably should be.
Relationships: Alicia Zimmermann & Jack Zimmermann, Bob Zimmermann & Jack Zimmermann
Comments: 8
Kudos: 152





	Check to the Head; or, One in Five

Thirteen seconds after taking too many pills, Jack knows he’s going to die, and he’s not as bothered by that as he probably should be.

\--

His Maman is there when he wakes up; his Papa isn’t, and he’s pretty sure it’s because his Papa hates him for fucking up before the draft. His Maman says he’s just out getting coffee and something to eat, that he’s been sitting by Jack’s side for days, but...Jack knows.

He knows where he ranks to his father, and it’s somewhere between hockey and where they live at any given time.

Jack drowned, and nobody noticed.

His lies there, in the hospital bed in a room that’s unrelentingly white, with a TV tuned to what looks like a soap opera, and his Maman strokes his hair, and he really wishes she would stop, but he doesn’t want to tell her that in case it makes her hate him too.

He had one job, and he couldn’t fucking manage that, and he’s pretty sure everyone hates him for that. It’s not like he has any other redeeming qualities.

He sleeps.

\--

His Papa is there the next time wakes up, and he smiles at Jack, but the smile doesn’t reach his eyes.

“I’m so happy,” his Papa says in French, and it sounds like a lie.

\--

The worst part about rehab, other than the fact that he can’t go on the ice, is the fact that they expect him to talk. There’s group therapy and check-ins and visits from his parents where they smile and ask him how he’s doing.

He wants to ask, why do you keep coming here? Don’t you hate me? I hate me.

He want to ask, what do you want from me, now that I can’t make the NHL? What are your expectations here?

Mostly, he shrugs a lot.

\--

A week after he comes home from rehab, his Maman sits across from him at the table where they all pick at food together once a day and signs in shaky LSQ,  _ Will you talk to me this way, if you won’t talk to me out loud? _

For a moment, Jack doesn’t understand, because they stopped letting him get away with using LSQ years ago, when he entered Juniors. You have to  _ talk _ once you get to that point, even if the words stick in his throat and come out all wrong, even if he can only talk right when he’s on the ice or on his meds, meds he’s not allowed to be on anymore.

Maybe it’s because they know his NHL future is gone, so it doesn’t really matter anymore.

His Maman starts to look disappointed--at his lack of response, maybe, he thinks--so he signs back,  _ What did you want to talk about? _

_ Tell me how you really are, please.  _

Jack shrugs.

“I--” She shakes her head. Signs,  _ I was thinking of making pea soup tonight. Any thoughts on that? _

She used to make pea soup when he was sick, before he left for Juniors. Jack shrugs again, then swallows and signs,  _ That sounds good.  _ Tentatively, he offers,  _ I could help if you-- _

“Alicia, have you--”

His father appears in the doorway, and Jack shoves his hands in his lap, hoping his father didn’t see him signing. He doesn’t want--he’s already fucked up enough. He doesn’t want his father to know that he’s gone back to signing, when it was made pretty clear that he was supposed to talk, all those years ago.

“Jack.” His father walks over to him, pressing a hand to Jack’s shoulder, and Jack tries really hard not to flinch. He doesn’t want to see the disappointment on his face.

“I would love your help,” his Maman says, standing up from the table. “I was thinking of getting started in half an hour or so.

His father’s hand is still on his shoulder. “Sorry,” Jack whispers, before his throat closes around the word.

His father shakes his head. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

And that’s a fucking lie.

\--

Jack wakes up, and he presses his back against the wall, wrists in front of him so he can make sure he’s not bleeding out, and then he’s pressing them against his drawn-up knees because he needs the pressure, he needs something, he wants to skate so badly it fucking aches.

For a second, for more than a second, he contemplates heading out to the rink on their property, but that would require his back to be exposed, and his parents could see, his father could see, and what if he can’t skate anymore, what if he can’t do it, what if that’s gone now and he’s left with nothing, because what does he have without skating?

What is he, without hockey?

\--

He ends up downstairs, eventually; he’s not sure what time it is, but it’s before dawn, and he sits in one of the hard-back chairs that buts up against the wall, a blanket pulled tight against his shoulders. It’s almost enough pressure to keep the panic away.

What he wouldn’t do for some anti-anxiety medication right now, except that’s the whole point, isn’t it. He has tools to work past it, to work around it, he just can’t remember them right now because everything is tangled up in his head like that yarn from when they taught him how to knit in rehab, before dropping stitches got his anxiety so bad he had to stop.

It’s not the first time he’s dreamt about dying, since. It won’t be the last time, either, he thinks.

He doesn’t want to die. He just didn’t have a vested interest in living.

A light switches on, and Jack pulls the blanket tighter around his shoulders, feeling so very exposed. His father is standing there in the doorway, blinking at Jack, and he says, “It’s 4am. What are you doing up?”

Jack shrugs.

His father scrubs a hand across his face, running it through his hair. “Why won’t you  _ talk _ to me? I know you were talking to your mother; why am I the one you won’t talk to?”

Jack’s jaw hurts from clenching it so hard, and then he snaps, “Because you made it pretty fucking clear you didn’t want to see me signing anymore, and I didn’t want to be any more of a disappointment.”

Those aren’t the words he wanted to say (they are, and that’s the problem) and this is why he doesn’t talk. Because when he does have words, when he can force them past the stone living in his throat, they’re the wrong ones, they’re the angry ones, and Jack doesn’t want to be that person, even when he is.

“I--” His father reaches out and grabs a chair, sinking down into it. “Fuck.”

Jack curls up even more in his chair. The blanket isn’t giving him enough pressure. He wants to crawl out of his own skin.

“I was just--I wanted to make sure you had what you needed to--”

“I know.”

“I didn’t--”

“I  _ know _ .”

His father looks up at him, and he looks like he’s going to cry, and Jack wants to be not-here to an almost frightening degree, but he couldn’t bring himself to move if someone offered him a spot on the Penguins right now.

He wants to stop existing, if it would make the anxiety a little less bad.

“I thought I was helping you,” his father says finally. “I’m sorry.”

Jack shrugs.

\--

His father finds him later that day; Jack has moved, but only to the couch, and he still has the blanket wrapped around him, and he’s been staring at a blank television screen for at least an hour. He had had some documentary on, but the sound was too much, and when he muted it, the movement was too much.

“I think we should talk,” his father says, sitting down as far away from Jack as he can get while still being on the same couch. “Or I think I should talk, and you should do what makes you most comfortable.”

Jack would be most comfortable phasing into another plane of existence, one where he doesn’t have a corporeal body.

“I love you.” His father presses his lips together. “I don’t think I’ve said it enough, and I want to make sure you know it. I love you. Even if--no matter what happens.”

Even if what? What’s going to happen?

“All those years ago, I encouraged you to speak more because I wanted to make your life easier. And I fucked up. And I have a feeling that’s not the only place where I fucked up. I wanted you to succeed. I still want you to succeed. But I think somewhere along the way we got lost, and I’d like you to help me figure out where that was, if you’re up to it.”

Jack isn’t up to it. He isn’t up to anything. He wants a heavier blanket.

He shrugs.

“There’s no pressure,” his father says, “and no time limit. But if what I’m doing hurts you, I want to know so I can stop doing it.”

Jack doesn’t want to have to teach his father how to be a parent, but for the first time in maybe forever, he thinks,  _ he’s trying _ , and so it doesn’t hurt quite so much.

\--

Jack is sitting on the floor, back to the wall, knees pulled up to his chest, and there’s so much, because the television was on and somebody mentioned hockey and his first thought was  _ I should be there _ , but he’s not, he won’t be, and he can’t breathe, he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t he can’t

“Jack?” His father says something in English, and it doesn’t translate, it doesn’t translate, and Jack puts his hands over his ears, and his shoulders ache and he wants to be smaller he wants to stop existing he wants he needs he’s so scared he’s going to have to spend the rest of his life existing like this and it will kill him except the problem is that it won’t the problem is that he’ll have to be alive to live with it.

His father sits down next to him, far enough away that Jack can’t feel the heat of him, and in French he says, “It’s going to be okay.”

Jack pulls his hands away from his ears to sign,  _ I’m never going to play hockey again it’s going to kill me I can’t live like that _ .

There’s a noise like his Papa just got hit, and then he starts to say, “Jack, you--”

_ What good am I to you if I can’t play hockey. _

“You’re my son.” His Papa sucks in a breath. “Fuck. Is that what you think, that you’re--that you’re no good to me, to us, if you can’t--fuck.”

_ Your son plays hockey. _

“My son is  _ you _ . I--crisse, what have I done? Jack, you’re alive. That’s what I want from you, to be alive, to be alive and healthy and--and happy. I would give anything for you to be those things. When I got that call, when I heard you were--you were in the hospital, it was the worst day in life.”

_ Worse than losing the Cup finals? _

“Worse than anything.”

Jack presses his forehead tighter against his knees.  _ I’m sorry I couldn’t get through the draft. I know you were planning on me going first. _

“Jack.” His Papa lets out an audible breath, and Jack can’t tell if it’s angry or upset or--or just breath. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but right now I don’t give a fuck.”

Jack flinches. He signs again,  _ sorry _ .

“Please don’t apologize.” His Papa’s hand touches his knee, and it’s heavy and warm through the fabric of his pants, and Jack doesn’t move away. “In some ways, hockey has consumed our family. I was so proud of you--I am so proud of you--for what you’ve accomplished, but I would be proud of you if you never set foot on the ice again. You’re smart and you’re kind and I have loved you since the second I found out your mother was pregnant. It took me too long to learn this, and I wish I had taught it to you earlier, but your worth is not determined by how successful you are at hockey.”

Jack’s throat hurts, and he thinks he’s crying.

—

Jack fucking hates knitting, but he finds one of the jigsaw puzzles that he used to do with his mom when he was little collecting dust in their basement and sets it up on a low wide table and starts doing it, making the outline with all of the edge pieces and then filling it in, and he feels the noise in his head go away a little.

They have a few puzzles in their house, and at three a.m. when he can’t sleep he finds and orders twenty-five puzzles off the internet, and he sits down and does them, one after another, and sometimes his mom sits and does them with him, but most of the time he works on them alone.

His Papa comes down and finds him working on one of the puzzles just after five in the morning, and when he says, “Good morning,” it’s not a struggle for Jack to say it back.

There’s a pause, and Jack keeps his eyes on the puzzle and not his Papa, and then his Papa asks, “Can I join you?”

There is no space in Jack’s head for another emotional conversation right now, but his Papa is trying, so Jack nods, nudging the box of pieces so it’s more in the middle of the table. “You can work on the sky.”

“Giving me the hard part,” his Papa says, but he’s smiling, and Jack manages to smile back.

—

It’s just on this side of too cold out when Jack laces his skates up, but all he can think about is the fact that his skates still fit.

There’s no reason why they shouldn’t, but it’s been the longest period of time since his Papa helped him lace up his first skates that he hasn’t worn skates, and he was so desperately, achingly afraid that they would feel  _ wrong _ .

But they feel comfortable, like the good weight of a blanket pulled around his shoulders, like--like coming home in a way that physically coming home has never managed to feel for him.

His parents aren’t home right now, and that’s on purpose; he didn’t want them to be here for this, just in case this goes catastrophically wrong. Just in case he can’t manage to skate.

He didn’t even tell them that he was going to do this, because then there would be expectations, and looks, and the weight of that pressure that he knows is there because it dragged him underwater and he’s just now relearning how to swim.

Jack takes a breath--and steps onto the ice.

**Author's Note:**

> I didn't want to present his dad as a bad father, just as one who didn't know how to connect with his son. Really, I wanted this to be about the process of getting better, and how it's hard and sometimes it sucks, but at some point it'll be a little less bad.


End file.
